{"id":745,"date":"2008-07-20T01:10:28","date_gmt":"2008-07-20T08:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/07\/the-critics-behind-the-curtain\/"},"modified":"2008-07-21T01:11:45","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T08:11:45","slug":"the-critics-behind-the-curtain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/20\/the-critics-behind-the-curtain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Critics Behind The Curtain"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the NY Observer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Reviewers Come In From the Cold<\/h1>\n

At Publishers’ Weekly, A Tradition of Anonymity is Abandoned; Herewith, Our Brief Review of the Reviewers<\/span><\/p>\n

BY<\/span>\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"From<\/p>\n

Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n

From an engraving depicting an American alderman of the 19th Century; he doesn’t seem to like the book much<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A review in\u00a0Publisher’s Weekly<\/em>\u00a0tends to be a book\u2019s first\u2014some of the titles in last week\u2019s issue won\u2019t be on sale until the end of September\u2014and for this reason, the dozens of reviews printed there each week, at about 200 words, are regarded as influential.<\/p>\n

A \u201cstarred review\u201d is a prize\u2014a guarantee, almost, that booksellers, librarians, and book editors across the country will all take a look at a title when they get the galley in the mail. No guarantee that they\u2019ll go for it\u2014not even editor-in-chief Sara Nelson would ever argue that\u00a0PW<\/em>\u00a0unilaterally sets the tone for a book\u2019s reception\u2014but in a field as crowded as this one, a mere look is a valuable thing.<\/p>\n

Thus the reviewers of\u00a0PW<\/em>, who do not get bylines, have spoken as one as if from behind a drape for the past 136 years, their authority drawn from the classic (if not a bit fossilized!)PW<\/em>\u00a0brand and reinforced by the anonymity they are afforded by the magazine\u2019s no-bylines policy.’<\/p>\n

Who are these individuals? Enthusiasts, mainly. Schoolteachers, professors, stay-at-home moms, authors. It takes all kinds. We looked a handful of them up on Google, corresponded with a couple, and came up with some crude bios. Here’s an assortment….<\/p>\n

[ click to read the Who’s Who of PW at Observer.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the NY Observer The Reviewers Come In From the Cold At Publishers’ Weekly, A Tradition of Anonymity is Abandoned; Herewith, Our Brief Review of the Reviewers BY\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH Getty Images From an engraving depicting an American alderman of the 19th Century; he doesn’t seem to like the book much A review in\u00a0Publisher’s Weekly\u00a0tends to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}